Table of contents for 1510 in The Week

What happened Keir Starmer presided over an investment summit in London on Monday (see page 40), at which he pledged to “rip up” the bureaucracy holding back new homes, data centres, wind farms, grid connections, train lines and other infrastructure projects. The PM said he would do everything in his power “to galvanise growth” and show that Britain was “open for business”. In the run-up to the summit, the port operator DP World had threatened to reconsider a £1bn investment pledge after Transport Secretary Louise Haigh lambasted its subsidiary P&O for its hiring practices. But the row was ironed out and ministers ended up hailing £63bn of investment commitments from businesses. For Labour, which marked 100 days in office on Saturday, the event was an opportunity to allay concerns about…

Controversy of the week At the end of the month, Rachel Reeves will deliver her first Budget as Chancellor, said Robert Colvile in The Sunday Times. “She finds herself in a near-impossible position”, because “she has made a series of near-impossible promises”. When she was running for office, Reeves told voters that there would be no increases to income tax, national insurance or VAT – no tax rises for “working people” – but “also that there would be more money for public services”. She promised higher investment, but also to control borrowing and debt. “She promised to be generous, but also thrifty. To spend, but also to save.” And the public finances, as Reeves often points out, were in bad shape to start with, said George Parker in the FT.…

BBC presenters, who will no longer be referred to as “the talent”, its director-general has said. During a discussion on BBC Radio 4, Tim Davie told Nick Robinson that he had “kind of” banned the word, in the wake of the Huw Edwards scandal. Storm warnings, after a glitch in the BBC Weather app led to forecasts of winds of up to 13,508mph in London and 5,293mph in Rome, and temperatures of 404°C in Nottingham. Joker: Folie à Deux, which was knocked off the top spot at the US box office after just a week by an indie horror film called Terrifier 3 and a cartoon called The Wild Robot. The speed of its collapse is believed to be a record for a comic book movie.…

Stuttgart Opera fright: Live piercings; blood spurts; a female Jesus singing tracks by Eminem and spanking a nun’s buttocks; naked nuns rollerblading and copulating with a crucifix: the first two performances of Sancta, an opera satirising the Catholic Church, which is being staged in Germany, saw 18 audience members having to seek treatment for severe nausea. Based on the Weimar-era opera Sancta Susanna, it’s the latest work by choreographer Florentina Holzinger, whose last hit featured a live endoscopy. The opera is restricted to audiences 18 or older and contains the content warning: “Sexual acts will take place on stage”. Gjadër, Albania Migrant centre: Italy’s controversial scheme to process asylum applicants at centres in Albania went into action this week, with the first migrants arriving at a new holding facility in…

“The website of Cash’s Nametapes now offers stick-on or iron-on labels, which could have spared me precious hours during my days of sewing on my son’s labels. But there cannot be a mother’s heart of a certain vintage that didn’t feel a pang at the sight of Andrew “Sandy” Irvine’s sock, carefully labelled and recently discovered on the north face of Mount Everest, a century after his attempt to reach the summit with George Mallory. Irvine was just 22 when he died – old enough to lose his life pursuing an awfully big adventure. But still young enough for someone to undertake that humblest and fondest of tasks, and sew his nametag onto his sock.” Jane Shilling in The Daily Telegraph…

Turning a blind eye to Sudan’s agony Jonathan Freedland The Guardian “Remember when we said that Black Lives Matter? We didn’t mean it,” says Jonathan Freedland. If we did, we’d be up in arms about what’s going on in Sudan. For the past 18 months, that nation has been ravaged by a brutal war that has displaced almost 11 million people and is “threatening to devour 13 million more through famine”. Nobody knows the death toll – some say 150,000 or more – but horrendous accounts have emerged of systematic killing and mass rapes. Aid groups say it’s the worst humanitarian crisis of our time. Yet we barely hear of it. Where are the front-page headlines and angry protests? It’s hard not to conclude that people just don’t care that…

An alarming generational “drift” Increases in various illnesses and ailments are often attributed to the fact that people are living longer – and so developing conditions that their parents would have not reached the age to get; but a new study has found that today’s older people are simply less healthy than earlier generations. The analysis of data on more than 100,000 people from several generations in England, the US and Europe revealed that “baby boomers” born in the late 1940s and 1950s were about 150% more likely to suffer from cancer, lung disease and heart problems when they were in their 50s and 60s than those born before the Second World War were when at that age. They were also as likely or more likely to struggle with basic…

James Holland, the historian who specialises in the Second World War, has praised the ingenuity of his local postal workers, after receiving a letter (from the 102-year-old widow of a War veteran) that was addressed to: “Mr James Holland, Well known historian, Wiltshire.” Someone at Royal Mail had scribbled on: “Try Salisbury SP5” as a clue for the sorting office. Hugh Grant’s parents were not at all supportive when he went into acting, he recalled on The Graham Norton Show. His father was a soldier and his mother a teacher. She had wanted him to be the Archbishop of Canterbury, and in their social circle, “showbusiness meant nothing”. After Four Weddings and a Funeral made him famous, his mother was asked at a dinner party what her sons did for…

With so much “doom-laden political rhetoric” around these days, it’s easy to forget that Britain is still remarkably successful at some things, said Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail. When it comes to science and innovation, for instance, this country still punches far above its weight. Since 1901, Britain has won no fewer than 140 Nobel Prizes, a total surpassed only by America, which has almost five times our population. The University of Cambridge alone outranks every nation except the US and the UK, having nurtured 124 Nobel laureates. They include two of the latest recipients, who were awarded the honour last week. The first was Geoffrey Hinton, the London-born scientist known as the “Godfather of AI”, who shared the physics prize for his foundational work on artificial neural networks.…

The timing may have been unexpected, said Oliver Brown in The Daily Telegraph, but the news itself was “genuinely exhilarating”.The appointment of Thomas Tuchel as the new England manager “is a victory, quite simply, for excellence over ancestry”. The FA’s choice represents a rejection of the “stubborn, self-defeating dogma that the manager’s bloodline must at all costs be Anglo-Saxon”. Instead, they’ve accepted that England’s current “luminous generation of players” are only likely to reach their full potential if galvanised by a figure who “understands how to inspire on the grandest stage”. And there is no doubt that Tuchel knows how to do that. On three occasions, while managing Chelsea, he “outsmarted Pep Guardiola”, including once in the Champions League final. More recently, while coaching a less-than-vintage Bayern Munich team, he…

Athletics Ruth Chepng’etich of Kenya broke the marathon world record in Chicago, winning in 2:09:56. It shaved nearly two minutes off the previous record, set by Tigst Assefa of Ethiopia last year. America’s Cup New Zealand led Ben Ainslie’s Ineos Britannia 4-2 on Wednesday in the sailing competition. Cricket England are top of their group in the Women’s T20 World Cup after beating Scotland by ten wickets. Tennis Jannik Sinner beat Novak Djokovic in straight sets in the final of the Shanghai Masters.…

Running time: 1hr 20mins “There’s a lot of Greek suffering hovering over London at the moment,” said Sarah Crompton on What’s on Stage. Robert Icke’s new version of Oedipus, starring Mark Strong and Lesley Manville, is about to open, and an Elektra, with Brie Larson, is due in January. But both of them “will have to be exceptional to match the sheer cathartic power” of The Other Place, a “very loose” retelling of Antigone that manages to be naturalistic yet also uncanny. Writer-director Alexander Zeldin strips away the complexities of Sophocles’s plot to illuminate brilliantly why a 2,500-year-old play – about a young woman who defies her uncle, with tragic consequences – still has “universal resonance”. The action unfurls not in ancient Thebes, said Sarah Hemming in the Financial Times,…

Azra’s son Khalil continues to ruffle feathers around the village, especially when Lynda accuses him of feeding crisps to her llamas. At the Tea Room, Fallon and Adam talk about George’s hearing – she’s decided to read out her personal statement. George shows an apprehensive Brad how to run his social media business; they admit they’ll miss each other. Over a friendly dinner, Alice tells Hannah she and Chris are co-parents now and, if Hannah likes him, she should go for it. Lynda visits Azra to smooth over the earlier misunderstanding. The Grundys gather for dinner before the hearing – George gets upset but Eddie says they’re not ashamed of him, they’re proud. In court, Fallon reads out her victim statement, to George’s shock; Susan comforts a distraught Emma. In…

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Has the Fed turned too dovish? Katie Martin Financial Times Was the US Federal Reserve premature in declaring the war on inflation over? Wobbles in the bond market suggest investors think that it might have “turned too dovish too soon”, says Katie Martin. Prices have been sliding ever since chairman Jay Powell delivered “a supersized interest rate cut” in mid-September, and a strong hint of more to come. Yields on benchmark ten-year US treasuries (the flipside of falling prices) are back above 4%, That matters in a market “which underpins every other asset class on the planet”. Critics argue that by cutting rates, despite strong economic growth, the Fed now risks overstimulating demand – particularly as “China is no longer the great global disinflationary force it once was”. At a…

This is how the conversation always goes whenever my 12-year-old daughter, Evie, asks me to buy fast fashion for her. “Please, please, please can I have this?” she’ll say (it’s usually from Shein). Sorry but no, I’ll reply – I’m sure we can find an alternative on Vinted. “One person buying something new won’t make any difference,” she argues. “And besides, it’s so cheap!” There is sulking (her), tutting (me), and dissatisfaction all round. As a fashion writer focused on sustainability (or lack thereof), I find that my daughter’s pestering grates, yet I sympathise – what tween doesn’t want to fit in? And my role-modelling of wearing the same old clothes to death probably has the opposite effect on her. So I explain to Evie why buying new fast fashion…

Forget puffer coats and parkas: this autumn, fashionable types are wrapping themselves up in bathrobes, The Guardian reports. Celebrities to have adopted the trend include Rihanna, Angelina Jolie and Isabelle Huppert, who recently wore a fluffy white robe on the red carpet, accessorised with dark glasses and diamonds. King Arthur has been included on a council’s LGBTQ+ history timeline because he “wore women’s clothes”. Denbighshire County Council featured the folkloric warrior king as part of a project celebrating “local stories of sexual orientation and gender identity”. According to myth, Arthur once disguised himself as a woman to sneak into a ball and get close to a love interest.…

An inquiry opened in Salisbury this week into the death of Dawn Sturgess, who was killed in the Novichok poisonings in 2018. The inquiry will examine the circumstances leading to her death, identify where responsibility for it lies and highlight lessons. Sturgess, 44, unwittingly sprayed herself with the nerve agent, which had been concealed in a Nina Ricci perfume bottle. The inquiry heard that it held enough poison to kill “thousands”. At the opening of the inquiry, Sturgess’s mother, Caroline, said the family drew some “comfort“ from the fact that “Dawn was the only life lost that day, when the potential harm was much, much more. We know she would agree.”…

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Criticising the “brothers”: Barack Obama has criticised black men for failing to get behind Kamala Harris, amid polls showing that one in four plan to vote for Donald Trump. In a speech in the swing state of Pennsylvania, he said that Harris did not seem to be attracting as much support from black voters as he had. This, he went on, “seems to be more pronounced with the brothers”, and he suggested that this could be due to their attitudes to women. The speech went down badly with some Democrats and on social media, where Obama was accused of belittling and scapegoating black men. Ottawa Escalating row: The row between India and Canada over the murder of a Sikh activist in British Columbia last year escalated dramatically on…

A hospitality worker who hung “body bags” from a tree outside her house in Liverpool has been ordered to take the Halloween display down, on the grounds that it is “triggering”. Caroline Ashley says she was surprised when a council worker visited her home to request the removal of decorations, explaining that they had “really upset” a neighbour. “It’s the quickest the council has come out for anything,” Ashley noted. The annual World Conker Championships was plunged into controversy after the men’s winner was found to have a painted steel chestnut in his pocket. David Jakins, 82, who has entered every year since 1977, finally won the title in Northamptonshire this week; but rivals’ suspicions were aroused when, three times, he destroyed opponents’ conkers with a single hit. It was…

SPAIN Why his majesty must not say “sorry” El Diario (Madrid) An apology. That’s all Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, wanted from our king, says Isaac Rosa. Not money; not a legal ruling; just a simple gesture – an apology for the centuries of abuse Spain perpetrated on the New World during its conquest. But Spain’s King Felipe VI point blank refused. And that’s when things fell apart. Sheinbaum dropped him from the guest list for her inauguration; Spain’s Socialist government, affronted by the snub, refused to send any delegation to the ceremony; and Spain’s nationalists declared that, far from apologising, Spain embraces “its imperial legacy with pride”, as if causing the death of millions of indigenous Mexicans was something they’d gladly do again. Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of the…

In his long and distinguished career teaching in British and American universities, the Shakespeare scholar Jonathan Bate has noticed something worrying, said Andrew Billen in The Times: students read a lot less than they used to. They struggle to plough through one Dickens novel in three weeks, a fraction of the pace of earlier generations. He is convinced that smartphones and social media – six-minute YouTube videos and instant TikTok dopamine hits – have eroded their attention spans. School syllabuses are also much less demanding: children are set Of Mice and Men rather than The Grapes of Wrath, and A Christmas Carol rather than Great Expectations. Bate is concerned. How can students absorb complex ideas and develop their critical thinking if they can’t read long books? Bate is not alone,…

An era at Wimbledon has drawn to a close, said John-Anthony Disotto on TechRadar. Last week, the All England Club announced that, at next year’s tournament, the services of its 300 line judges will not be required. The judges – mostly avid tennis fans who were paid around £150 a day – have been a feature of Wimbledon for 147 years. Smartly clad, latterly in Ralph Lauren uniforms, they stood at the edge of the court, watching with “laser focus” to determine whether the ball crossed the line (and shouting “out”, or “fault”, accordingly). But now Wimbledon is following other grand slams in adopting Electronic Line-Calling (ELC) on all 19 of its courts. The system, an update on the Hawk-Eye tech used for close calls, includes 12 cameras to track…

It may have been an “inevitable” decision, but that “doesn’t reduce its impact”, said Simon Cambers in The Guardian. Last week, Rafael Nadal announced that he would retire from tennis after next month’s Davis Cup. The Spanish left-hander, who is 38, had expressed a desire to keep playing, but his body no longer allows him to “compete for the biggest titles”. By most measures, he ends his career as the secondmost successful male tennis player of all time, after Novak Djokovic. He has 22 grands slams to the Serb’s 24 (Roger Federer, the other member of the “Big Three”, finished with 20); 36 Masters titles to Djokovic’s 40; and the second-highest career earnings. Andrés Iniesta, the World Cup-winning Spanish footballer, might have been right when he described Nadal as the…

How to deal with Putin To The Economist When I was in Nato’s HQ in Kabul, a belief emerged that negotiations with the Taliban would inevitably produce a lasting peace deal. It never emerged. The very hope that a deal was possible and just required a bit more pressure on the Taliban’s leadership distracted us from recognising that the militants had completely undermined the state apparatus in rural Afghanistan. The Taliban knew they had the momentum, and negotiations just served as a tool for their final victory. Hoping for negotiations is not a strategy. For more than a century, large wars have ended either with a return to the status quo or a decisive victory. Unless Mr Putin clearly faces defeat, he will not be pressed into a reasonable peace.…

by Diane Abbott Viking 320pp £25 The Week Bookshop £19.99 There have always been “two sides” to Diane Abbott, said Rachel Sylvester in The Times. A fearless and “rather fun” trailblazer, she is also an “unreconstructed left-winger” who can be “self-righteous, predictable and factional”. And both sides are on display in her memoir, A Woman Like Me. Take the chapters dealing with Jeremy Corbyn, who was her boyfriend in the late 1970s. She’s “funny and candid about their relationship” – there’s an amusing account of a camping holiday in France, during which he insisted on travelling on a rickety East German motorbike, and of the date he took her on to Karl Marx’s tomb. But she is “less willing to face up” to his flaws as a politician; she still…

A Dirty War by Anna Politkovskaya, 2001 (Harvill Press £18.99). In 2022, it was a shock to many that Russian troops in Ukraine could act with such brutality, but Politkovskaya had documented the same in Chechnya, years earlier. A journalist of immense courage and conscience – both intimidating and inspiring – she told that story like no other. She was murdered in Moscow in 2006. Between Two Fires by Joshua Yaffa, 2020 (Granta £10.99). A thought-provoking insight into the complexities of life in an authoritarian system. Putin’s Russia is a twisted world that warps minds and morals. These evocative portraits capture the nuance as Yaffa explores how far his characters are willing to compromise in order to succeed, or even survive. Putin’s People: How the KGB Took Back Russia and…

Programmes Churchill: Britain’s Secret Apartheid Nadifa Mohamed explores a neglected chapter of WWII history where, despite his misgivings, Churchill allowed the US army to maintain its policy of racial segregation in Britain. Sat 19 Oct, C4 20:20 (60mins). DI Ray Second series of the crime thriller. Parminder Nagra’s DI Ray investigates the double murder of a young nurse and a crime boss. Sun 20, Mon 21 and Tue 22 Oct, ITV1 21:00 (60mins each). Storyville: Dogs of War Documentary telling the story of a Basingstoke man who spent 40 years fighting as a mercenary, everywhere from Afghanistan to Colombia. Tue 22 Oct, BBC4 22:00 (90mins). Trump: The Criminal Conspiracy Case Investigation into the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. Wed 23 Oct, BBC2 21:00 (90mins).…

The two-hour Derry Girls Tour celebrates the TV show that helped turn the city into a tourist hotspot. It begins at the Derry Girls mural on the Badgers Bar and includes locations such as the Guildhall (£10pp; Sat, Apr-Oct; derrycitytours.com). Blackbeard to Banksy is a two-hour history tour of Bristol, from the city’s medieval heart to its harbour (£12pp, daily; blackbeard2banksy.com). Come hungry to the City of Arcades Food Experience in Cardiff. You’ll meet the city’s artisan producers and tuck into delicacies on this 4.5-hour tasting tour (£67.50pp; fortnightly, Fri/Sat; lovingwelshfood.uk). The 90-minute Glasgow Street Art Tour takes you off the beaten track to discover the city’s unique street-art scene (£12pp, 2pm daily; walkingtoursin.com). The Five Ways to Die in Birmingham Tour lasts two hours and offers a glimpse into…

Seehotel Ambach Caldaro, Italy Offering “breathtaking” views across Lake Caldaro in the Italian Alps, this family-run hotel is a “beautiful” relic from the 1970s, says Max Benato in The Guardian. Designed by the architect Othmar Barth, its whitewashed exterior curves like a “brutalist boomerang”, and its interiors are a parade of “the Italian design industry’s greatest hits” from the era, all “channelling good-time vibes”. Walking in “really is like time travelling”, with nothing but the bathrooms altered during a recent refurbishment. There’s a hectare of parkland by the lake, with a spa and pool, and Bolzano is nearby. Doubles from €168 per person, half-board; seehotel-ambach.com.…

Poppy Gustafsson “Labour used to claim Rishi Sunak was a wannabe tech bro,” said Jamie Nimmo on Bloomberg. Now they’ve hired a tech leader of their own, former Darktrace CEO Poppy Gustafsson, as the new investment minister. Gustafsson, 42, is certainly on message: “I have always been drawn to growth,” she writes in The Guardian. “I’ve taken a company public… faced down short-seller attacks” and made deals “with leading US private equity firms”. A protégée of the late Mike Lynch at Autonomy, Gustafsson sold Darktrace, an AI-based cybersecurity specialist, to Thoma Bravo for $5.3bn this year, “pocketing a lifetime of financial security”, said The Times. The Government wants to help mature startups (or “scale-ups”) to keep growing rather than selling up, as Darktrace did. Ratan Tata The death of India’s…

THE WEEK CROSSWORD 1436 Two Connell Guides and three Week-branded items will be given to the sender of the first correct solution to the crossword and the clue of the week opened on Monday 28 October. Send it to The Week Crossword 1436, 121-141 Westbourne Terrace, London W2 6JR, or email the completed grid/listed solutions to crossword@theweek.co.uk. Tim Moorey (timmoorey.com) This week’s winner will receive Week-branded items including a notebook, coffee mug and tote bag, as well as two Connell Guides (connellguides.com). ACROSS 7 Fall back asleep surprisingly after run (7) 8 Leave sailor to reverse a difficult situation (7) 10 Simplest works put down in error (8) 11 One refuses to admit some yarn? (6) 12 For this embarrassing situation Grannie flat’s preposterous! (2,9) 15 Awful housing left bare…

Han Kang, the 53-year-old South Korean novelist, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. The award cited her “intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life”. This year’s Peace Prize went to Nihon Hidankyo, a group that represents the survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Interns, after the Wall Street trading firm Jane Street advertised a summer job with a salary of $250,000pa. “We don’t expect you to have a background in finance or any other specific field,” says the ad, but “research experience is a plus”. Wallace and Gromit fans, with the release of a “teaser” for the first feature film starring the Claymation duo since 2008. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl – which features the villainous penguin…

45% of Australians want their country to remain a monarchy under King Charles. 33% would like it to become a republic. 22% are unsure. Pulse of Australia 72% of British adults believe that children who are brought up in this country should be taught to be proud of Britain and its history, including 67% of those of black Caribbean descent, 63% of those of Chinese descent, and 57% of Indian descent. 60% of adults believe Britain has historically been a force for good in the world. Policy Exchange/The Daily Telegraph Democrat contender Kamala Harris has a 2.6 point lead over Donald Trump in the latest poll of polls from FiveThirtyEight.…

The Bake Off outsider Sandi Toksvig has long been a staple on shows such as Whose Line Is It Anyway? and The News Quiz. But her highest-profile gig was hosting The Great British Bake Off with Noel Fielding between 2017 and 2020 – and it was not one she relished, says Julia Llewellyn Smith in The Sunday Times. “Three of the longest years of my life,” she sighs. For starters, she didn’t really understand the show’s raison d’être. “Cakes are readily available in the shops.” And the filming process wasn’t much fun either. “You stand at the end of a long table for hours when [judges] Prue [Leith] and Paul [Hollywood] taste everything and we literally didn’t speak or taste anything. I used to say, ‘Can we not sit down?…

Pandemics tend to cause panic and conspiratorial thinking. In the case of Covid-19, the fires have been stoked by the Chinese government. It has never published clear conclusions on how the virus emerged: on the contrary, state sources muddied the waters by claiming, without evidence, that Sars-CoV-2 arrived in Wuhan on frozen food imports or was brought there by the US military. In early 2021, WHO-appointed scientists flew to Wuhan to investigate the pandemic’s source. After spending 12 days there, which included a visit to the WIV lab, the team concluded the lab-leak theory was “extremely unlikely”. The report was criticised by the US, the EU and 13 other nations, on the grounds of Beijing’s lack of transparency when it came to crucial data. In mid-2021, the WHO directorgeneral Tedros…

The cost of war, in US dollars Matthew Petti Reason At least $22.76bn. That’s how much the past year of conflict in the Middle East has set back America, according to a new study by the Costs of War Project at Brown University, says Matthew Petti. This is just the direct burden on the US military budget, dating from the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 until the end of last month. The bulk of it – $17.9bn – was spent on Israeli military aid. The sum doesn’t include indirect costs, such as increased US security assistance to neighbouring countries, nor the $1bn in US humanitarian aid to Palestinians. The study’s timeframe also doesn’t cover Iran’s 1 October attack on Israel, during which the US navy says it fired “about…

The NHS is proposing to roll out weightloss jabs to thousands more people in an effort to ease Britain’s obesity crisis. Over the next 12 years, it wants to offer jabs of tirzepatide (brand name Mounjaro) to 1.6 million people, starting with those with a BMI of 40 or more and multiple chronic health conditions. (Anyone with a BMI above 30 is considered obese.) Tirzepatide is the most effective obesity drug on the market: studies have shown that it can help people lose up to 26% of their body weight in 18 months when it is injected weekly. Two-thirds of Britons are now overweight or obese and, according to the latest research, the average middle-aged Briton is a stone heavier than they were 30 years ago, with middle-aged women weighing…

A Labour government is “hardly worthy of the name, at least to its core supporters, if it doesn’t address the legal rights of working people”, said Sean O’Grady in The Independent. Hence Labour’s manifesto pledge of a new Employment Rights Bill within its first 100 days in office. Last week, it duly published that bill, two days ahead of deadline. The question is, does the bill contain enough to please Labour voters and energise MPs who have been disheartened by the Government’s dismal first three months? On the whole, it does, said The Observer. With the UK lingering “far below the OECD average when it comes to employment protection”, millions of Britons “suffer the indignity of insecure work with no or very low sick pay, and very limited rights”. This…

“If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.”Judith Martin, quoted in The Washington Post “I want my children to have all the things I couldn’t afford. Then I want to move in with them.”Phyllis Diller, quoted in Parade “Politicians and diapers have one thing in common. They should both be changed regularly, and for the same reason.”Eça de Queirós, quoted in Gentleman’s Journal “Go out on a limb. That’s where the fruit is.”Frank Scully, quoted in The Knowledge “Reputation is what men and women think of us; character is what God and angels know of us.”Thomas Paine, quoted in The New York Times “Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.”F. Scott Fitzgerald, quoted in Entertainment Weekly “Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there.”Miles Davis,…

To The Times As a former hospice nurse, I know that the main concern of those who are dying is those they love above themselves. Illness is costly, both financially and with the extra stress on families travelling to visit loved ones. To argue that it is an individual choice to die is largely false: decisions are influenced by the dying person’s perception of the needs of those they love. Denise McEwan, Moulton, Northamptonshire To The Times The risk is not only that people may be pressured into an assisted death. After ten years of working for my local hospice, I know that many terminally ill patients are pressured into arduous and intrusive treatments. Relations often find it harder than the patient to accept impending death, and later grieve over…

by Michel Houellebecq Picador 544pp £22 The Week Bookshop £17.99 Michel Houellebecq once admitted that what he most wanted was to move his readers. “That’s what I admire most in literature,” he said: “the ability to make you weep.” With his new novel (which he says will be his last), the reliably “scabrous” 68-year-old has finally made good on that ambition, said David Sexton in The Spectator. At first, Annihilation appears to be a political thriller in the mould of Houellebecq’s last novel, Serotonin, which was set during the gilets jaunes protests. Paul, its 50-year-old protagonist, is a special adviser to France’s “brilliant finance minister”, who is embroiled in a plot to install a “puppet president”. A subplot involves environmentalists who are engaged in “cabbalistic cyberterrorism”. Yet as it progresses,…

Frank Auerbach at Offer Waterman/Francis Outred Frank Auerbach’s paintings of London are a chronicle of the city over the past seven decades, not in documentary terms, but as a record of something intangible, a feeling of place. The early works in this superb show, Portraits of London, from the early 1950s, are as dull of palette as a wartime diet, depicting mass reconstruction and rubble clearance in the city’s bombedout heart: the impasto is so thick as to appear less sculptural than industrial, mimicking the textures of the scenes it depicts. The following decade saw Auerbach exploit aggressively bright colours and zinging directional marks: dramatic zig-zags of red and blue seemingly terrorise the new Post Office Tower in a view from Primrose Hill. These disparate approaches are synthesised in later…

The craze for “K-food” Until recently, Korean food was hard to find in Britain outside of a few enclaves such as New Malden, in southwest London, which has been home to a significant Korean population since the 1950s. Now, “K-food” is all but impossible to avoid, says Tomé Morrissy-Swan in The Daily Telegraph. The trend was ignited by the “street-food wave” of a decade or so ago, which helped popularise dishes such as Korean fried chicken and Korean corn dogs. Soon, a new generation of “modern” Korean restaurants, many offering unfamiliar tastes and textures, followed – from Miga in Hackney, where the cooking is “homely” but “superb”, to Bokman in Bristol, which specialises in wood-fired chicken stuffed with sticky rice. And now people are increasingly making and eating Korean food…

Majority Little Shelford This “cute” DAB radio with Bluetooth measures just 13cm x 10cm x 17cm. It can be mains or battery powered, and has a useful preset function, plus an alarm clock and a sleep timer (£40; thorness.co.uk).…

Alex Salmond 1954-2024 One of the most consequential – and divisive – politicians of his generation, Alex Salmond, who has died aged 69, transformed the Scottish National Party from a fringe party into a “formidable political force”. As leader of the SNP from 1990, and later first minister, he “normalised” the cause of Scottish independence, and came within a few percentage points of breaking up the United Kingdom, said The Guardian. The result of the referendum in 2014, at 45% to 55%, was closer than many had predicted; but it was a loss even so, and he resigned, to be replaced by his former protégée and political partner, Nicola Sturgeon. Three years later, Salmond lost his Westminster seat too. Then allegations of sexual misconduct started to resurface and, in 2018,…

When the gene testing company 23andMe floated three years ago, it made a paper billionaire of its co-founder Anne Wojcicki (former wife of Google’s Sergey Brin). The “once-hyped” firm, which pledged to revolutionise healthcare using its mail-in “spit kits”, has since seen its value plunge from $5.8bn to less than $150m, said the FT, following a damaging data breach and a spate of board resignations. Rows with investors and “growing concern over who owns its genetics data” have added to its woes. With potential buyers running scared, Wojcicki may have to draw on her personal wealth to shoulder a buyout. “The clock,” said one VC investor, “is ticking.”…

Invesco EQQQ Nasdaq 100 This fund, with 25% invested in Apple, Microsoft and Nvidia, offers a simple, low-cost way to own the largest growth shares, says Harshil Patel. Nasdaq can be volatile; but over the past decade, the fund has gained “a whopping 460%”. iShares Core EURO STOXX 50 EUR This cross-sector fund tracks 50 of the eurozone’s largest stocks. It’s “a region with plenty of uncertainty, but just as much quality too”, says Gordon Best. One for fans of undervalued markets. iShares Edge MSCI World Quality Factor ETF Tracks an index of global stocks “with strong and stable earnings”, says Paul Summers, returning almost 80% in five years. Features pharma giant Novo Nordisk and “the usual tech suspects”. L&G Cyber Security UCITS ETF If you agree with Warren Buffett…

Who’s tipping what The week’s best shares Bellevue Healthcare Trust The Daily Telegraph This trust invests in the “dynamic” US healthcare market – focusing on therapeutics and diagnostics firms, and next-gen weight-loss meds. The sector has been shunned, but sentiment should improve. Buy. 147p. Diageo The Daily Telegraph Weak operating conditions have hit the Smirnoff, Johnnie Walker and Guinness owner – but its brands command customer loyalty. Rate cuts and lower inflation should catalyse demand and boost profits. Yields 3.1%. Buy. £25.43. Good Energy Group The Mail on Sunday This green-energy firm’s broad mix of ops includes sourcing solar energy from small-scale suppliers – from farmers to factories – and installing heat pumps and storage batteries in homes and businesses. Growing fast, and profitable. Buy. 264p. Pearson The Times The…